John Carter (12A)

I’m sure by now we have all heard about John Carter's massive box office failure, so in this review I’m simply going to ask “why?”

The honest and quick answer is Disney waited too long to make an average film that cost way too much. The longer answer is John Carter is boring, pointless, nonsensical, and completely without merit. Let me try to explain.

Let’s ignore that the film is set on Mars and go straight to the heart of the problem: the “immortals”. In the introduction to the movie, we are shown these beings who are immortal and shape Mars' destiny to whatever their “oracle” wishes. The immortals are embodied by Mark Strong and one of the immortals' tricks is that they can change our perception of reality – they can make me see one thing and everyone else see something else entirely. Now that's confusing to read – just imagine it on screen.

However, the main drawback to the immortals is that the second John Carter encounters one, he shoots them and they die. So ... they're not really immortal at all, are they?

The directing is garbled and foolish, and the film takes all of its ideas from every other sci-fi movie you can think of. I actually preferred last year's Cowboys & Aliens.

What should have been played fast, loose and fun ended up looking tight, serious and emotionless.

On an entirely different planet – on just about every level.

0.5/5

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